For a business owner, obtaining the right information is as important as finding the right location, or getting the best price.
The Small Business Development Center in New York is one of only a few SBDCs in the U.S. with a full-time library (which we call the Research Network). Its services are available for free, but only to New York SBDC clients.

Monday, July 28, 2014

The SBA Administrator recently announced a transformative new plan to automate SBA lending and streamline and simplify the agency’s underwriting process to attract more lending partners and open up new markets for small business owners who need capital to expand and grow. Days after this announcement, which will ease the burdens on lenders approving small-dollar loans to entrepreneurs, she appeared at a Clinton Global Initiative conference in Denver to help announce an exciting commitment called the Century Club. Eight Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) each pledged to make at least 100 small business loans a year for the next 10 years, which will inject $1 billion of additional capital into America’s small business ecosystem.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

A new study has revealed that 59 per cent of Britons would not use a company that had obvious grammatical or spelling mistakes on its website or marketing material, and 82 per cent would not use a company that had not correctly translated its material into English.

The research, conducted by Global Lingo, polled 1,029 UK adults on their online purchasing and browsing habits.
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Wonder how Americans would react?

Friday, July 25, 2014

If you’re about to start a business, you’ve probably read several how-to books looking for advice on how to be successful. While researching is a great first step, there are some lessons that you won’t find in a book.

You need to hear from business owners who have been in your position, who started a business with a great idea, a lot of enthusiasm, and a shoestring budget. To give you a few business tips, we asked several entrepreneurs, including Kelly Costello, who was featured on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” to tell us what they wish they’d known before they started their businesses.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Whether you’re a startup or an up-and-running business, you should know what your total potential market opportunity is for your products or services.

Caroline Cummings has coached many companies over the years, as well as judged several business plan competitions, and she's always surprised by how most business owners can’t confidently tell you their total market potential. They tell her things like, “My market is everyone who eats dessert,” or, “Everyone in my community who drives a car,” or, “Anyone in the world who uses social networks.”

You may think these are your markets, but you need to drill-down and get more realistic and specific about the true size of your market, or lenders and investors will question your credibility.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

“Weird Al” Yankovic wraps up his eight-day string of video releases with “Mission Statement,” which premieres today on Speakeasy.

The song, from Yankovic’s new album“Mandatory Fun,” is in the style of“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” by Crosby, Stills & Nash. The song features Yankovic harmonizing with himself on lyrics constructed of corporate jargon, like “operationalize our strategies” and “leverage our core competencies,” while the animated whiteboard video depicts a live-action hand that is drawing illustrations to go with the words.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

What nightspots trend on Twitter? Heineken helps young people find out. You’ll also learn what people really share on social networks, how to write like a spy, why word crimes are way worse than blurred lines, and why joining Instagram may be the smartest thing the TSA ever did. Skim for your share of state secrets.

Friday, July 18, 2014

Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and others rave about Business Adventures, by the late John Brooks. It was written in 1971, and consists of 12 stories from The New Yorker. The print edition has been out of print for a while, but it is now available as an e-book. It sounds great!

"There's just no evidence behind it," says Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who's written about the shortcomings of the Myers-Briggs previously. "The characteristics measured by the test have almost no predictive power on how happy you'll be in a situation, how you'll perform at your job, or how happy you'll be in your marriage."

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

As the lean startup method quickly gains popularity among the high-tech startups of Silicon Valley, many entrepreneurs may question the necessity of a business plan. But statistics prove that businesses are overwhelmingly better off when they set goals and implement a plan for how to achieve those goals.

The report, based on a survey of almost 400 small businesses conducted in January 2014 by Palo Alto Software, found that small business owners who regularly plan and track their business’s financial metrics expect more growth in 2014 than business that don’t plan. According to the survey, 79 percent of companies with a business plan say they are better off financially compared to a year ago, while only a third of small businesses without a business plan can say the same thing. Additionally, nearly 75 percent of established companies that have a business plan in place expect to grow more than 10 percent in 2014, compared to only 17 percent of companies that don’t have a business plan.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

The premier funder database, Foundation Directory Online, now includes a free search tool that has replaced Foundation Finder, providing public access to essential information about nearly 90,000 foundations and over 250,000 IRS Forms 990-PF.

Friday, July 11, 2014

After almost five years of gradual economic recovery, we are seeing increasingly positive signs from small businesses. The establishment birth rate (the share of the average of the previous and current total number of establishments) has been showing slow, relatively steady increases. And the number of employers is on the rise, which is apparent in the increasing gap between establishment birth and death rates. Above all, prosperity is most evident in the upward trend of proprietors’ income, which has increased more than a third in recent years after a lackluster performance earlier in the decade.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

The Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program is part of the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau. The LEHD program produces new, cost effective, public-use information combining federal, state and Census Bureau data on employers and employees under the Local Employment Dynamics (LED) Partnership. State and local authorities increasingly need detailed local information about their economies to make informed decisions. The LED Partnership works to fill critical data gaps and provide indicators needed by state and local authorities.

Under the LED Partnership, states agree to share Unemployment Insurance earnings data and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) data with the Census Bureau. The LEHD program combines these administrative data, additional administrative data and data from censuses and surveys. From these data, the program creates statistics on employment, earnings, and job flows at detailed levels of geography and industry and for different demographic groups. In addition, the LEHD program uses these data to create partially synthetic data on workers' residential patterns.

All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have joined the LED Partnership, although the LEHD program is not yet producing public-use statistics for Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands. The LEHD program staff includes geographers, programmers, and economists.

Ther mission is to provide new dynamic information on workers, employers, and jobs with state-of-the-art confidentiality protections and no additional data collection burden.

Tuesday, July 08, 2014

Use the Entrepreneurship.org Resource Center to find information about all aspects of starting and growing a business. Designed with entrepreneurs, policy makers, investors, mentors and academics in mind, our resource center allows you to rate and comment on the materials posted by the community.

Monday, July 07, 2014

For more than fifty years, the SBA has helped entrepreneurs start, grow and succeed in their business ventures. For all kinds of business owners across the country – including in traditionally underserved communities – SBA provides resources and access to capital they need to flourish. Here's how SBA helps entrepreneurs and business owners who are:

Friday, July 04, 2014

VAMBOA is a non-profit veteran business trade association that promotes and assists Veteran Business Owners, Service Disabled Veteran Owned Businesses (SDVOB) and Military Business Owners. "We know that you possess special skills including leadership abilities and a work ethic second to none. Veteran Business Owners, Service Disabled Veteran Owned Businesses (SDVOB) and Military Business Owners are highly qualified to build successful businesses. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and responsible for job generation."

Thursday, July 03, 2014

In 2006, a report published in Inc.com concluded — ridiculously — that productivity losses cost U.S. employers more than half a trillion dollars — $544,000,000,000, to be a little more precise. The report found that in an eight-hour day, employers spent an average of 1.86 hours “on something other than their jobs, not including lunch and scheduled breaks.” And of those surveyed, 52% “admitted that their biggest distraction during work hours [was] surfing the Internet for personal use.”

The data is garbage, of course; the idea that employees should be always-on and that anything less than that is going to result in productivity losses isn't based in science or reality. But every once in a while, there’s an example of an employee who goes to the extreme, not doing much work and perhaps none at all. Take, for example, the story of a former software developer identified by the press only as Bob.

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About the blog:

The Research Network aims the content of this blog primarily at the New York Small Business Development Center (NY SBDC) community on the kinds of things we encounter every day. Views expressed are those of the Research Network staff, and not necessarily those of the New York SBDC or its partners. Comments to an individual post are encouraged. Such comments will be monitored, so please, keep them clean and professional.

Definition of a small business by the US federal government

Definition of a small business in the state of New York

Consolidated Law for the State of New YorkEconomic Development Law § 131§ 131. Definition of a small business. For the purposes of this chapter, a small business shall be deemed to be one which is resident in this state, independently owned and operated, not dominant in its field and employs one hundred or less persons.

World Reference

The NYS SBDC, administered by the State University of New York, is funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.